The writer's blog

When I was a little kid I was in a very bad car accident.  I was hit by a van outside my Aunty and Uncles house. 
I was at the front window waiting for my parents to come back from wherever they had been and pick me up.  When I saw their car arrive, and park across the road, I ran out of the house to it, straight into the path of an oncoming van. 
The driver had no chance, and I was hit head on and thrown a fair distance to land in a bloody heap on the road.
I remember two things from that day.  Pain and lights.  Then nothing for the week after it and then being in Hospital.

Hospital

I was in the Hutt Hospital children's ward for a long, long time.  I don't know how long, it felt like years.  
I remember  waiting, waiting, waiting for my parents to visit which got less and less as time went on.  That  may not have. happened but in my child's mind that is what I remember.  They had three other kids so I guess, out of sight out of mind.  I don't know. 


I remember the kindness of the nurses and how they used to let us kids, the ones who were there long term, make and share their supper when we were supposed to be in bed asleep.  It was made out of the left overs from our dinners.  It was served from bain-marie delivered on a trolley back in the day, and tasted yummy, especially mince on toast.  I remember making cold sausage sandwiches where i had sliced the sausages and the other kids just bunged the whole sausage between buttered bread. 

 
I was so homesick I used to cry...a lot, especially at night, most nights.  Until a nurse  gave me about ten pillows so I could make a nest all around me at night time to snuggle into.  It was like getting a cuddle and it was the only way I could fall asleep.  Even now, at fifty eight years old, I still have at least eight pillows on my bed, and I still surround myself with them to sleep.

I have always read...a lot.  I read everything in the hospitals little children's library and the driver of the van came to visit me and bought me a set of Noddy books, with my name in them.  (My son was badly burned in a terrible accident and ended up in Hutt hospital years later and my books were still there)  Also, someone, I don't know who,  gave me some ladybird fairy-tale princess books.  I loved them.  I ended up collecting most of them through the years.


I had a lot of plastic surgery on my face.  After all a van had ploughed into it.  You can tell even now that something isn't quite right, I only have a tear duct in one eye so the other one is always weeping, not great for mascara or eye liner, and my face is very asymmetrical.  But I think they did a pretty good job.
I remember talking to the plastic surgeon for some reason, and I gave him a picture of the most beautiful girl in the world to me, Snow white from the ladybird Snow white and the seven Dwarves and said, "Can you make me look like her?"